Pages

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

State Of The Trade : TfL's Non Compliance And Harassment Agenda

We've decided to suspend the daily compliance statistics as you can't report on negative action.

The idea of this daily report was to try to show that the new wave of compliance officers were doing a sterling job, but unfortunately driver observations have revelled the opposite to be true.

Of all the sightings, mainly during the days, it seems the army of COs only concentrate on Licensed Taxis. The main bone of contention appears to be over ranking and the forming of unauthorised standings. Yet these new recruits seem to be oblivious of Private Hire cars, forming illegal ranks, waiting in restricted areas and touting (illegally plying for trade).

When approached by drivers asking why they are not enforcing compliance towards Private Hire drivers, the COs answer they haven't been told to, or they've only been ordered to deal with Licensed Taxis.

This whole issue has become quite a disgrace as its obvious TfL are harassing and purposely picking on a Taxi Drivers.

Most new recruits are badly trained, do not have a grasp of Hackney carriage legislation and are only concentrating on certain contraventions of Taxi drivers. Point in question was illustrated in a PR video on the Londonist blog, that showed compliance officer, telling a licensed taxi driver to remove a sticker from his rear window. Reason given was it was blocking his rear view.

Taxi Leaks recently enquired about the blocking of rear views by the badly sited Credit Card a Readers. We were informed that on vehicles that have two wing mirrors fitted....it is not a legal requirement to have a clear rear view from a centrally fitted mirror. They sited a delivery van as an example.

Surely, if it's good enough to block the rear vision with a credit card reader, then a transparent Union membership sticker, should also be fine. Just more proof of TfLs agenda of harassment.

We saw this basis agenda last year when top brass including Garrett Emmerson and Helen Chapman went out with operation neon officers accompanied by Steve McNamara (LTDA), Grant Davis(LCDC), Peter Rose(Unite) and Eddie Nestor from BBC radio. Members of the group were touted in soho but no action was taken against the touts.

When Taxi Leaks asked TfLTPH why no action was taken over this incident, we were informed no one from the group had made an official complaint.

Well done Helen, not the first time....remember Queen Victoria Street?

Sadly our representative orgs appear to be more interested in having a cosy relationship with TfL rather than truly representing their membership. Demos and trade media have become all about recruitment, hence the rise of the driver lead Independent Taxi Alliance.

There has been much talk about the drivers -nearly half the trade- who refuse to subscribe to any org or union....but can you blame them.

What have trade orgs won for the trade over the passed decade....I can't think of one victory.

All meetings with TfL appear to be in-camera with no minutes taken and very few reports making it into trade media.

Perhaps the time is right for a driver revolt.

It is now blatantly obvious that TfL are behind the trades exclusion from the Bank Junction on the premise that it will speed up bus journey times. The resulting congestion to the surrounding area has not been taken into consideration at the the talks held with ITA, mediated by the RMT, City planners were unable to produce any data to support their claims.

We are informed that the industrial action will go ahead at the Bank Junction daily from March 1st.